


True Love's Gifts

by BlueMaple



Series: True Love's Gifts [1]
Category: Maleficent (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Biting, Evolving Relationship, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gifts, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, Non-Graphic Bloodplay, PTSD, Scars, Sub Diaval, Time Passing, Trauma, True Love's Kiss, just a little bit fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26675353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMaple/pseuds/BlueMaple
Summary: In which Diaval and Maleficent's relationship evolves in intimacy, tenderness,  pain, and finally -  mutual understanding. Fluff, angst, and yes, a lil bit of smut...
Relationships: Aurora/Phillip (Disney), Diaval & Maleficent (Disney), Diaval/Maleficent (Disney)
Series: True Love's Gifts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943206
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	True Love's Gifts

When Maleficent sleeps, it is always with a hand resting beside him, touching him lightly but not-quite-on-him, though sometimes, after a particularly strained and difficult day, she does just barely stroke his head or wings with her fingertips. It puzzles the new-made man at first; she tolerates absolutely no physical intrusion of any sort when she is awake, but Diaval is a raven, and he doesn’t just like shiny things, he’s quite bright himself. It doesn’t take him long at all - less than a week after she takes him into her service - to make the connections; his new mistress’s fingers only move to touch him and stroke him when the pain is especially bad. She is self-soothing with it, and projecting, in her chronically restless sleep, as she has no other source of comfort but herself, on her directive that he is now her missing wings. 

Soon, too, Diaval can always tell when her wings return to her in her dreams: when she takes flight, when she is flying… Her touch is no longer gentle at those times; her fingers no longer stroke him; there are only talons curling around him in the darkness, pinioning him, pulling his feathered body closer, brutally and painfully digging into and savaging his plumage, her hands urgent in their forcing and reshaping of the touch-memory he provides her into the only reality that can comfort her now. He becomes a part of her on those nights: taken into her, invited to enter her wounds in a way, as another might enter her body, providing not new life, but the comfort of the old and lost. Maleficent never apologizes for the pain she causes him, but she never seeks to protect him from it either, by sending him away… And there is this too; no badly how injured he is, Diaval always wakens to find himself fully healed, not a feather out of place.

As the first year passes, he actually comes to welcome the pain that comes in the darkness: to treasure, even, the few beads of blood that remain and cling to his plumage the next day, because for a few moments they had bought her peace. And as even more years pass, he grows, not just to welcome the pain, but to love it as he loves her, till it is no longer a service he provides but a gift he offers, and the sensations (however admittedly unpleasant in the moment) are more intimate and pleasurable than any more standard fantasy that his largely disinterested imagination could ever dream up on its own.

That’s only when she’s asleep, though. She never harms a hair or feather on his head when she's awake, preferring to express herself in her fits of temper by turning him to other, less beautiful and dignified creatures in her particularly noxious and irritating and self-amusing manner. When she is awake and he is human, Diaval’s body provides her with none of the comfort that it does as a raven; he serves only as her servant in the more traditional manner. For well over a year, nothing changes there, but then, suddenly, one day, he has a new job - not just as her spy, but as a reminder and a promise, not to her or to the general population, to the one very specific enemy. And on that day, for the first time when she is awake, the pain comes too, for when the day of the christening arrives, Maleficent, Protector of the Moors, stands before her enemy, regal and straight-backed, hand stroking Diaval’s feathers and her talons digging into his flesh, and he knows she is soaring again, the power and memory of flight that his agony is providing her fueling the rage and regality in her fey and savage eyes. _You took them,_ she says to the weak-mouthed trembling wretch kneeling before her. His crown, Diaval can’t help but think, could really use a good polish. _But you will not triumph. I remember. More to the point…_

_I do not forget._

On that day of the christening, Maleficent, Protector of the Moors offers a deathly curse as a gift to her enemy’s daughter. The pain she offers Diaval as she casts it is the raven’s gift to her. She heals him with the touch of a fingertip before they leave, not looking at him when she does it, not acknowledging it, or him, and they never speak of it again, of course, but the next time he is bathing as a man, he notes a new scar on the ball of his right shoulder. He touches it with his own fingertip, and presses down lightly. The only pain he feels is in his memory, but he can’t help but smile a little, and preens his feathers especially carefully that evening for her delectation (in whatever form she might choose to demand it of him) before joining her in their nest. 

On the night of Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, when Maleficent and he return to the Moors, not in triumph, but _as_ a triumph, she settles into their nest and flicks her fingers. Diaval, settled beside her in raven form, not-quite-touching, jumps violently, scrambling back as he is suddenly a man, stammering apologies and doing his absolute utmost not to peek through his own fingers. It’s a bit difficult, since there aren’t the extra preventative layers that come with his wings. And she doesn’t look remotely the same to him as a man as she does when he’s a raven. No, not _remotely,_ and even after all the years, it’s the only way he’s ever been in her proximity when she’s taken off her false feathers to bathe. He hears what could have been, if she had been anyone other than his Mistress, a small, genuinely gentle, amused snigger.

“Pull yourself together, Diaval,” she orders him. She’s exercising that indulgent tone, the one that never, never bodes well, accompanied as it always is by her altogether too-well exercised and over-acute sense of whimsy. 

“I can’t,” he says bluntly.

“Not even if it’s what I need?" she inquires archly. “Whatever happened to ‘whatever you need, Mistress’, mm?”

“I’ve been runnin’ among humans as a human for sixteen years now, Mistress,” he returns. “And I’ve picked up on a few things. Includin’ the value of purely human self-preservation. On the purely pragmatic front… I can’t exactly serve you if I’m dead, can I?”

“Are you frightened, Diaval?” Yes, the whimsy is definitely present and accounted for, and really, he doesn’t like cats any more than he likes dogs, and that purr is just _provocative_ on her part. “Of me?’

“Yes, Mistress.” She says nothing. Diaval peeks out. “Forgive me, Mistress. That _was_ the right answer, wasn’t it?”

“Of course,” she says blandly. “What other answer could there possibly be?”

Diaval’s long throat bobs nervously as he swallows at that. He’s picked up on more than the sense of self-preservation in his wanderings among humans over the years. They tend to like their clandestine meetings where they deliver information to each other in clandestine corners. They also like delivering other things to each other, in corners and out. It’s all been very educational, and not occasionally alarming, and has made him grateful more than once that he was born a raven. 

He drops his hands, but his eyes are tightly closed now. Maleficent sighs.

“Diaval,” she says crisply.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Stefan was, at the end, and in the end - and in the beginning for that matter - extremely poor at flying,” she said. “I was quite disappointed, really, at his failure to satisfy in the purportedly climactic moments, and would be quite disappointed too, if you were to fail me as well now, now that related events have finally been put to bed. So to speak.”

“He might not be able to fly, but I have no wings like this, Mistress. And if you shove me out of this bed, you’re not goin’ to have anyone available to clean up the mess.”

“And it wouldn’t be your concern, would it? Let me worry about the details,” she says firmly. “All of them.”

“Mistress…”

“Diaval…” she mimics.

“Yes, Mistress?”

"Open your eyes."

Reluctantly, he squints at her. She crooks, rather than flicks a finger.

 _Intomybed,_ she murmurs. Surprisingly, her magic seems to fail her. Diaval is still rooted to the spot.

“Um." He looks down, then up. “Why didn’t it work?”

“Because it’s not something I need,” she says patiently “It’s something I want.”

“Oh.” He processes that, in spite of himself. The implications there are… Intriguing. “I don’t know, Mistress. Maybe a nice ‘I want you, Diaval? I can’t do this without you, Diaval'?"

“I can do it without you,” she says. It isn’t a threat. He knows the tone of her threats, after all the years. He hesitates, then puts one foot in front of the other. Two more steps carry him to her side. He kneels beside her. His throat bobs again.

“How may I serve you, Mistress,” he says, and his voice is a low, sudden rasp, and _are you frightened, Diaval_ she'd asked, and _yes, was that the right answer,_ and then _what other answer could there possibly be?_

There is a pause, then...

“You may call me Maleficent if you like. You saved my life, after all. All debts are paid.”

“And if I don’t like? I mean,” he says hastily. “What if I’d rather call you the other? Would that be alright?”

She reaches out deliberately and strokes his hair, lightly, lightly.

“Pretty bird,” she says, and then... “Pretty boy.”

And the talons tighten into his scalp, and she hauls him to her, and together, they fly.

**FIVE YEARS LATER**

The engagement dinner is most unsubtle, the pointed message delivered via their dinner plates even less so, but it is there that the Queen makes her fatal mistake, for Maleficent does not interpret the entrees as a threat to her, or even to the fey as a whole as it was likely intended, but to Diaval himself. After twenty-odd years it was bound to happen, he reflects as he watches the fangs pop; familiarity might breed (though only very occasionally now) contempt, but it also breeds possessiveness, and then the _other_ fangs come out, and she points at them, and even then, she manages to keep control, but when the bitch makes that crack about mothers and family...

 _Oh_ _no,_ he thinks incredulously. _Oh yes,_ too, but mostly just _Really?_ Really _?!_ She actually, actually _went_ there?

She did, and the fall-out is as spectacular as it was predictable, but then...

Well.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged. You’re just not going to _win_ at the unsubtle when wings and horns are involved. Especially when you’ve just made it _just that personal._

And it’s then, that, after all the years, Maleficent finally returns his gifts - all of them- in full measure, because after it is all over, _really_ over, she goes back for the cat. She brings it to him, immobilized in a glowing green mesh bag.

“A gift,” she says with all of the gracious, regal magnanimity that she could manage with her fangs yet bared like that. “Do with it what you will.”

Diaval thinks about that, watching the thing hiss and spit and entangle itself in the net. He thinks about it a lot. It takes quite some time.

“Well?" she says, a touch impatiently. “Are you just going to sit there and stare at it?”

“No,” he says. He looks at her. “I’ll need you to be my talons.”

She smiles. 

“You don’t need to kill it,” he adds hastily. Blood, when it isn’t his own, is more annoying than not when cleaning the plumage, and even so, she’s refined her nocturnal approaches over the years since she got her wings back. He definitely wouldn’t call her subtle - no, definitely never that - but there are her feathers involved now too, and she’s got a lot more to clean than he does now when they’re sticking together, one way or the other. She’d learned rapidly to take it into account, even in her dreams. 

“So noted.” She contemplates the squalling contents of the net - and flicks her fingers at him. 

_Intoadog._

Then, almost immediately...

 _No. Intoa_ bigger _dog. Withbiggerteeth._

Diaval stares at her reproachfully, tongue lolling, and doing his utmost not to wag his tail. Again, it’s become more difficult over the years. He hates and resents the form as much as he ever has, but she just has that _effect_ on him. _And_ on his tail… She raises an eyebrow at him.

“Yes?" she inquires. The raven (never a dog, never ever ever _ever_ a dog, no matter _what_ he looks like) contemplates his options again. Again he takes too long. Maleficent sighs. The net disappears. The cat flees - and Diaval’s transfigured instincts take over immediately, and he is off in a shot, in hot pursuit. 

Several hours later, when he’s done playing and trots back, Maleficent flicks again. He rises gracefully, a man once again.

“What are you goin' to do with it now?” he inquires. The cat he’s dropped at her feet lolls, exhausted and battered. His mistress slips down from her tree and examines it.

 _Intoamouse,_ she orders.

It morphs most unobligingly, the grass around it reforming into a cage. Diaval nearly laughs himself sick at its expression of horror and dismay. He falls to the grass, arms outflung and cawing with gasping mirth, then staggers up and collapses again, able to do nothing but cackle.

“And what would you _like_ me to do with it now?” she muses, when he’s partially recovered.

“Take it back,” he says. “Change it back to a cat. Between the two of us, it’ll never look at birds the same way again.”

“What’s the point of being your talons,” she pouts. She even _pouts_ regally. “If you won’t let me use them on our enemies?"

“They’re my talons,” he points out. “So what I say goes.” Then, provocatively… “ _Mistress._ ” She stands up, astride him, looking down, hands on her hips and wings fully stretched.

“Up,” she orders.

He stands up, obligingly. Part of the way, anyway. He stops when he reaches his knees.

“Well?” she demands.

“You may put them in my hair,” he says grandly, and in the same breath, actually cries out as she grabs and digs her nails in and _hauls_. She just leans down.

 _Intome,_ she murmurs. _Now._

Pained, Diaval smirks up at her… And the fangs make their first personally directed appearance of the evening. At some point during the proceedings that follow, they kick over the cage. When they are recovered, they realize that the mouse is gone.

“Oh well,” Maleficent says. She rolls him on his back, and sits astride his thighs. Diaval flings his arms out as wings, smiling up at her. She trails her fingernails over his lips, his cheekbones, his eyes... He closes them automatically, his lips parting. He feels her fingers combing through the hair, searching out and stroking out the feathers. Trailing down and tracing his sharp hipbones and the adjacent hollows. His feet flex, toes stretching and curling, back arching, arms still outstretched. Then she is slipping down, and...

 _“What have you done,”_ he rasps in contented exhaustion, in very short order indeed. “ _To my beautiful self?”_

Maleficent just slips up again. His arms come around her as she presses silently, and most atypically, into his side. He frowns, alarmed.

“Mistress,” he says tentatively. “Are you well?"

“What would you have me call you?” she asks, instead of answering.

“What?’

“You call me Mistress. Even now, as your choice. What would you have me call you, if I were to ask you for your choice again?’’

“Are you?" he says tentatively. Questions like that might not be dangerous, he's learned, but again, the wrong answer can be. "Askin', I mean?"

“Just answer the question, Diaval.”

“Nothin' wrong with my name, yeah? I’ve always liked it. Sounded specially nice just now. You know. When you were cawin’ it to the skies for all the Moors to hear?“ His lips tilt at her.

She slips off him, arms around her knees. He sits up facing her, naked. She reaches out and touches his hair. He lies on his side again, head in her lap. She strokes his hair and the soft little feathers scattered throughout.

“Aren’t you goin’ to turn me back,” he says. “It’s gettin’ full dark now.’

“Do you wish me to?’

He tilts his head and looks up at her. She traces his lips. They part for her automatically.

“Pretty bird,” she says. “Perhaps not tonight. You do make a pretty boy too."

“Your pretty boy?” he dares. 

She leans forward and kisses his mouth in response.

“Won’t work,” he says, dabbing at his lip gingerly. “No need, anyway.”

“Mm?’

“True love’s kiss. I’ve been awake to you all along. Only makes sense really.’

“Do pull yourself together,” she says severely, and then - “All along?"

“Yes. A group of ravens is an unkindness, you know? There are reasons. I’ve never really been able to identify you with that descriptive, since you saved my life and all.”

“Well, that is how it tends to work with blessings,” she says, "They're meant to bring out the best in you," and…

 _Oh._ He struggles to catch his breath. _The cat was just the warm-up, then._

“Now, now,” he manages. “Do pull yourself together?"

Maleficent just smiles.

  
  



End file.
